


desert island band

by lauwerance



Category: Green Room (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Found Family, Hair Dyeing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Scars, i'm assuming if you're reading a green room fic you kinda know what's gonna be mentioned, injuries, just a leetle bit, perhaps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27722198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauwerance/pseuds/lauwerance
Summary: Everyone survives the events of the movie, they all move in with Tad, and Pat eventually remembers who his desert island band is.
Relationships: Pat/Tiger (Green Room)
Kudos: 1





	desert island band

**Author's Note:**

> There's an astounding lack of green room fics on here and I would like to see that change. I'm also surprised that out of the 5 (five) fics on here, not a single one is pat/tiger. I would also like to see this change, green room fandom rise up hkfahslfd. I hope whoever reads this enjoys the scant bit of content I was able to provide :) .

The first thing Pat does when the ambulances and the police and what must be half the fucking fire department trucks show up is break down in sobs again. It’s been a long fucking day, and his arm hurts like a  _ bitch _ where Tiger wrapped it it ducktape and he wants to go  _ home.  _ Not that he has a home right now anyways. The closest thing he had to home was riding shotgun in the van while Tiger drove and Reece and Sam dicked around in the back. 

He and Amber are hit with what feels like a thousand different questions while out of the corner of his eye, Pat can see each of his three bandmates being rushed into ambulances and sped away. Pat doesn’t know if he’ll even see them again, but he’s crying and being helped up by someone and there’s only so much his poor brain can handle right now. 

Someone guides him in the direction of a police car and he blindly gets in, not sure what else to do. Under the best of circumstances he wouldn’t trust cops within an inch of his life; he knows none of the band would, especially not Tiger. But he’s already halfway into the backseat of the nearest cop car and he’s hoping that it’ll take him wherever they’re taking the rest of the band. He tries to slow down his crying enough to form coherent words, thinking back to Tiger breathing with him in the green room.

“Hey. Hey, where are they taking everyone.” Pat asks, and the cop who’s helping him into the car says

“To the nearest hospital. We’re taking you there, too, and your other friend.” he says, and Pat is a little relieved. At least the one other conscious and  _ definitely  _ alive person will be going there too. He only just met Amber that day, and she seemed as fed up with him as she was everything else, but maybe she’d be glad to see him too. 

He must fall asleep in the cop car on the way to the hospital because the next thing he knows is that he wakes up as a bunch of people with blue gloves and blue scrubs are half helping half lifting him onto a gurney and his arm is hurting again and he’s being wheeled through hallway after hallway of bright, fluorescent white lights. He gets nervous about every room they pass, that it might just turn into another part of the lab under the green room, like maybe he’s been so hopped up on adrenaline for so long that he’s starting to hallucinate. Eventually they get into a room where he’s put in the very center. They start putting an IV in one arm (or at least that’s what Pat is pretty sure they’re doing) and it’s not even his bad arm but it  _ hurts _ . Some guy who looks like the person in charge comes in and shakes his head at Pat’s arm for a second, a concerned look on his face. 

“Where’s the others?” Pat tries to ask, but even he can tell his words are starting to slur. His limbs feel heavy, every bit of him does, right down to his eyelids. 

“They’re in surgery right now.” comes the muffled reply. Pat tries to nod, but it doesn’t seem to work so he nods in his head.

“Where am I?” Pat asks. 

“You’re in surgery, too. We’re giving you some sedatives and painkillers that’ll probably knock you out for a bit.” the doctor says, and is it just Pat, or are the lights overhead starting to swim a little? “We’re going to try to save your arm, ok?” the doctor says, but by then Pat’s already slipping away from consciousness.

He dreams about dogs chasing him and his bandmates and Amber through a cornfield, and he can’t see them but he can hear them crying, yelling, trying to find one another until eventually their voices fade and Pat is the only one there, screaming himself hoarse in the corn. 

He wakes up in a different room than the one he fell asleep in. The light seems so bright after so long with his eyes closed, and Pat keeps them half-lidded as he tiredly looks around the room. He still feels slow and sluggish, and his body still feels very heavy, like he couldn’t even lift an arm or leg if he wanted to. Dim sunlight is filtering through a curtain-covered window to his left, the shadows it sends across the floor making it look like it’s the evening. It probably is. The walls are painted a light blue and it's calming to look at, almost soothing on Pat’s eyes. His eyes drift downwards to his bad arm, and he doesn’t know if he’s more surprised or relieved to see that his arm is in fact still attached to his body. He can only tell that all of it’s there because of the tips of his fingers poking out of the end of the cast. He can only tell it’s there at all because he can see it, but otherwise he can barely feel it. He’s still got an iv in his right arm, and he can hear the faint beeping of a heart monitor in the back of his mind. A curtain to his right shields him from the rest of the room, and while he doubts anyone else is in there with him, he still wishes that he could see the entire room. Especially the door. 

Pat thinks it’s a few hours later when a doctor comes in to check on him. He asks about his bandmates and almost cries in relief when he hears that they’re finally able to tentatively call the three stable and that Amber just got out of surgery thirty minutes ago. They tell Pat that after a couple more days of rest he can probably get up and see them if he wants to, and he  _ really does _ want to. On the second day of laying in the hospital bed, he’s told all about what they did to his arm, how they somehow stitched it back together from the mangled, taped up mess that it had been. The doctor warns him that he may not have any feeling in his hand, or have limited movement in it (if any) or both, but that’s ok with Pat because at least he still  _ has  _ it. He can’t help but ask how bad the others are, since they’re all out of their initial surgeries now (in the next few days, Reece and Sam both have to go back twice). Pat’s told that Amber had bite wounds and bullet wounds in her legs, and that she’ll probably walk with a limp and most likely need the help of a cane. Reece had several stab wounds and was probably the closest to dying instantly when the wounds were inflicted out of all of them. Sam had a lot of bites on her torso and chest, and they were lucky that they had a transplant ready for some organ or another because without it she would have been in a lot worse shape. It would be a miracle if Tiger could talk again, let alone sing. His vocal chords had been ravaged, and he had needed a lot of blood, but he was stable.

While hearing the doctor list the injuries, Pat couldn’t help but stare down at his arm, wondering why he was the one that had it the easiest. All he got was a busted up arm, while all three of his bandmates would never be the same. 

Pat’s fourth day in the hospital is a busy one. The day before the police had come to ask him questions about that night in the skinhead hellhole until he had felt his head spin. So when the doctors tell him that if he’s careful and if he has his arm in a sling he can go see the others, he readily agrees. 

He goes to see Amber first, since she’s fully awake and in the closest room and can’t walk yet. She’s still sullen and quiet and doesn’t seem all that excited to see Pat, but he can’t blame her. If he was her, Pat probably wouldn’t be very excited to see him either. But she gives him a small smile when he goes and sits in the chair next to her bed, and scribbles his name on the cast on her left leg and she does the same to the one on his arm.

Next is Sam, and Pat can feel his stomach drop down to his toes and his heart leap up in his throat at the anticipation of seeing one of his bandmates, can barely stand the waiting. A nurse tells him that Sam has only woken up once, and she’s in a medically-induced coma so that her body can take some time to heal undisturbed, and Pat almost cries at the sight of her. She’s got bandages completely obscuring the middle of her body, with another one on her leg and tubes going into her nose and mouth to help her breath and eat. Pat only sits there long enough to rest his good hand on hers for a moment before moving on to the next.

Reece is not much of a better sight, and he has breathing tubes too, and bandages around his head and neck and chest. The nurses warn him that Reece will probably have some sort of brain damage after he heals, and Pat doesn’t know what to think about that, doesn’t even know what Reece will think, and he’s known the guy for almost 8 years. He spends a little more time with Reece, telling him that he’s sorry he lost the gun and thank you for being the one to keep them all safe as long as he could and hoping that Reece can hear him.

Tiger is the hardest for Pat to see. He knows that both Tiger and Sam had to have skin grafted from other parts of their body to repair the damage done by the dogs, but the only bandage Pat can see on him is the one around his neck, stark white and thick and so eerily unsettling. He looks like he’s sleeping peacefully, just like the others. His faded blue hair is ruffled and clean against the hospital pillow and Pat does cry a little; sits by Tiger’s bedside and cries quietly because he’s so fucking relieved and so fucking worried all at the same time. 

Tad comes by on the fourth day too, says he heard about what happened and had to come down to see them. He tells Pat he’s so fucking sorry for sending them into a death trap and Pat tells him its ok and Tad offers up his apartment for them to stay in and Pat says thanks. 

He does end up going to Tad’s, goes after a few more days in the hospital. In that time Tiger finally wakes up, and it’s so hard to see him silent for once. Pat had gone in to see him and Tiger had lit up grinned and opened his mouth to say something but nothing had come out, he had just laid there mouthing  _ Pat _ and Pat had thrown his arms around him the gentlest way he could and held on for a long while while Tiger’s arm came up to hold on to Pat, too. Tiger was the second person to sign Pat’s cast. Amber comes to Tad’s, too, says she had nowhere else to be considering that Emily is dead and she had been kicked out of her house a while ago. Pat wishes he had the van (it’s got literally  _ all _ their stuff in it), but the police took it for evidence and he has no idea when he’ll get it back. Amber comes with a wheelchair (which she initially refuses to use) and crutches and several appointments at the hospital to check in on her legs. But Tiger and especially Sam and Reece need more time to recover.

So Pat and Amber wait. They sit and talk most of the time, or don’t, or they listen to Tad’s extensive vinyl collection. Pat tells her about the band and the gigs they’ve played and she tells him she doesn’t care and Pat thinks that’s ok because at least they’re talking to one another. They’re never in a room alone when they can help it, especially at night. Pat thanks the heavens above that none of the rooms in Tad’s apartment are green. Every time they go to the hospital for their check-ups they go visit Sam and Reece and Tiger, since they can’t afford to just go to see them without needing to be there. Eventually Pat is able to get some of their stuff back and he takes to sleeping in Tiger’s sweater, the one with the stripes. 

Tiger is the first one of the last three to join the little apartment group. He and Pat start sleeping curled up next to one another on Tad’s tiny guest bed while Amber takes Tad’s bed and Tad moves to the couch. Right from the start Tiger is protective as hell, always hovering around Pat and calming him down when he wakes up from a nightmare and is constantly checking in on him in whatever way he can without his voice. 

When Reece comes, it’s with warnings about ticks and seizures that he might or might not have and more painkillers and more bandages. He moves slower that he used to, and is almost gentle with everyone. He sleeps on a side-of-the-road twin mattress on the floor next to the bed, so that he and Pat and Tiger can see that they’re all there and alive and ok. On a weekend, Tad (who Reece calls Tadpole all the time now) goes to a thrift store to find extra blankets, since there’s now five soon-to-be six people in one apartment.

Sam is the last one to be released, and she comes with even more meds than Pat cares to count. She sleeps in the large bed with Amber, so that she has plenty of space. It’s where Sam spends most of her time, deciding early on that it’s too much of a hassle and too painful to get out of bed very often. She tells the boys that they should be glad they can pee standing up because it’s a bitch to do when you’re a girl wrapped in more bandages than a mummy and Tiger falls onto Pat’s shoulder, wheezing with silent laughter.

They all start learning sign language for Tiger, since they’re mostly stuck in the apartment all day and have nothing better to do and Tiger is getting fed up with only being able to speak in bizarre gestures and notes and wheezes. They spend all day huddled around Sam in her bed, Tiger on one side and Amber on the other while Pat and Reece watch and wait for Sam to show them what signs she’s looked up on their phone. They start with just the alphabet, and Pat signs slower than the rest because he’s only using one hand, but Tiger nods at him whenever he gets a sign right so he keeps trying. 

One day the police ask them to come to the station to identify some of the suspected Nazis, so Pat and Tiger and Reece all go and have to stand in front of a one way window while a bunch of skinheads sneer back at them from inside the holding room. It’s unsettling, to say the least. Pat knows that they can’t see him but it’s still terrifying. Tiger puts a hand on his arm, a question on his face and signs  _ R U OK? _ and Pat nods and takes Tigers hand. 

Four of them end up having a fear of dogs, Reece and Tad being the only ones who don’t. Every time one of them hears a dog barking, even in the distance it puts everyone on edge. While Pat and Amber are instantly put on high alert, ready to give in to their fight or flight instinct at any moment, Sam and Tiger shut down; closer the dog, the more intense these feelings were for all of them. One time someone Tad was interviewing brought their dog to the apartment, and even though it was no bigger than a hefty chihuahua, it still took Pat ten minutes to calm Tiger down enough to coax him off of the couch. 

Pat’s hair grows back slowly and he’s  _ so _ glad when it does; he asks Tiger and Tad to dye some sort of pattern into it because he wants to get it as far away from the skinhead look as he possibly can. So that’s how all six of them end up crammed in Tad’s tiny bathroom, Tiger and Pat in front of the mirror, which was freshly cleaned for the occasion. Amber is sitting on the counter and Sam is perched on the edge of the bathtub, leaning on Reece for support and Tad is in the doorway trying to help. 

“Tiger, it doesn’t look anything like the picture.” Sam says, holding up the checkerboard patterned haircut that she searched up on the phone. 

“We’re doin’ our best with the materials provided.” Tiger says hoarsely, trying to keep the dye off of Pat’s neck. Tiger started trying to talk again about a week ago, and his voice is still weak and scratchy and probably always will be. He still signs most of the time, especially on days when he can’t bear to speak. 

“The spray dye from Party City would’ve worked better.” Reece says. 

“That would fuck up his hair even more.” Amber points out, painting a checker onto Pat’s head.

“ _ More _ ?” Pat says as Reece responds “At least Party City is cheap.” 

“The leftover dye is fine.” Tad says, but picks up the old box of dye to read it anyways. 

The checkerboard pattern turns out more like a diagonal series of spots than an actual checkerboard. 

“Ok, be honest. How bad is it.” Pat asks before he looks in the mirror.

“Y'know I love you, right?” Tiger rasps after a moment of silence and Pat groans. Sam rolls her eyes and says “just go look at it” (Pat ends up loving it).

A month after that, Tiger kisses him; they’ve just recently begun to mess around with instruments again, though nothing is the same as before. Pat can barely use his stiff left hand in its new, much smaller cast to play and Tiger likes to poke at his fingers and call them ‘stiff little fingers”, after the band. Pat can see the cuts farthest up his arm, all stitched up and he feels a little like frankenstein. He can tell that they’re gonna leave nasty scars; all of them are going to have scars.

Tiger can barely sing like he used to; he tries rasping through some lyrics and more often than not he needs to stop and drink some water and even sometimes get some pain meds. After singing at all he usually signs for the rest of the day (which he’s getting very good at). Surprisingly, Amber volunteered to step up as singer and right from the get go she could yell herself hoarse with the best of them.

It’s difficult for Sam to bend over a guitar at first. The skin around her midsection is still healing, and it's easiest if she just sits on the couch and plays.

Reece can’t play the drums like he used to, freaked the entire group out by blacking out the first time he played a fairly aggressive song (he was fine, they just gave him water while Sam rummaged through the papers given to them by the hospital when Reece was released). 

They tend to play with their volume very low, so as not to upset Tad’s neighbors and not to trigger anything in themselves. 

It’s after one of these jam sessions when they’re lazing around, listening to records and laughing and starting to maybe feel like normal people their age again. Pat is the first one to go to bed, as usual, but Tiger stands up and yawns and declares that he’ll join Pat and so they go to the little guest room, which is less a guest room now and more just  _ Pat and Tiger and Reece’s room _ . They’re laying down facing each other, talking about something or other, about how Tiger’s hair is getting shaggier and Pat’s dumb checkerboard is growing out. They fall silent for a moment, Pat taking the opportunity to look at Tiger, really look at him like he hasn’t gotten a chance to before, and Tiger just leans forward and kisses him. It’s gentle in a way that Pat wouldn’t have expected if it had happened last year. Tiger’s kissing him softly and Pat lets him, bringing a hand up to run through Tiger’s faded blue hair. 

By some unspoken agreement they break apart when Reece comes into the room to get something, and Pat can suddenly feel his heart hammering away in his chest. When Reece leaves, Tiger turns his gaze from the coor to the room back to Pat.

“You know I  _ actually _ love you, right?” Tiger asks quietly, and Pat nods, too awestruck to form a complete sentence.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and Tiger just says “ _ cool _ ” before pulling Pat right back into a kiss. 

It sort of goes unspoken that they’re together after that. They don’t want it to be a big deal, they’ve never made this sort of thing a  _ big deal _ , not when Tiger changed his name, not when Pat got kicked out after being outed, not when Sam and Reece had a one time Thing that lasted all of a month. Pat eventually ends up reluctantly telling Amber, who turns right around the next day and tells Sam, who then takes it upon herself to tell Reece who ends up telling Tad because he feels bad that the guy doesn’t know that two of the people living in his house are together.

As the bandages slowly come off and the stitches slowly get taken out, they can all see their scars properly for the first time. Pat’s look like they’re spiraling around his arm, a fucked up corkscrew of pink skin. He’s not that self conscious about them, doesn't feel an urge to cover them up all the time or anything. Whenever someone stares too long or asks him what happened in public, it’s usually Reece who jumps in with an  _ oh, that? He got it in a freak skydiving accident. Yeah, real scary stuff. _ and the irony is that most of Reece’s stories would probably have been less terrifying than what really happened. Sometimes he lets Tiger trace his fingers over them, when they’re being lazy together, and Tiger treats them like they’re made of glass (but he doesn’t treat Pat himself that way, and he loves Tiger for it). 

Tiger’s scar across his neck is quite the sight, and most of the time he wears scarves and turtlenecks to cover it up, usually blaming the cold Washington weather. He still speaks with a rasp, if he speaks at all. Usually, the more comfortable he is the more he’ll talk. 

Amber and Sam’s scars are easy to cover up with normal shirts and pants and socks, but both of them walk with a limp, and there’s still a wheelchair in Tad’s closet just in case standing is a little too much. It took Amber a long time to get used to the idea of a wheelchair, so used to the idea of doing everything herself.

Reece’s scars are harder to see; some of them get covered up by his hair, some get hidden by his shirt, but there’s a few on his neck that Pat can see if he looks carefully, as well as one just barely peeking onto Reece’s cheek from above his ear. 

Some of them get jobs because it’s been  _ far _ too long with just Tad paying the bills, and every time Pat gets home from restocking the shelves at a local store he just about falls into bed next to Tiger and it’s one of the best feelings in the world.

Pat’s laying in bed with Tiger one night, feeling the latter playing with his fingers and humming  _ Alternative Ulster _ to himself in a hum that breaks and wheezes every so often. It feels like they’re on their own little desert island, away from all the stuff that had happened to them months ago. 

“Hey,” Pat whispers, even though Reece started sleeping in the living room a while ago. 

“What?” Tiger whispers back, leaving Pat’s hand be for a moment.

“I remembered my desert island band,” he says and Tiger smiles.

“Mine is still the Misfits.” he says and Pat nods. After not even a second of silence Tiger nudges him. “Spit it out, I’m gettin’ impatient.” Pat laughs quietly.

“It’s Don McClean.” Tiger arches an eyebrow, and the only reason Pat can see it in the dim room is because it’s as blue as the rest of his hair.

“The American Pie guy?” Tiger asks, and Pat laughs again.

“Yeah that’s the one.” 

“ _ Really?” _ Tiger says again like he can’t really believe what he’s hearing, and Pat nods.

“Bye bye Miss American Pie, baby.” he says as Tiger snickers into the blankets. “That’s my desert island band.”

What he won’t tell Tiger, though, is that Pat remembers being on a drive with the band for a gig out of state, and while he was in the passenger seat, just barely awake but not tired enough to really fall asleep, Tiger was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and singing along under his breath to  _ Vincent _ . It was the softest Pat had ever really heard him sound, especially when singing. The lyrics are beautiful and the road is blurry and all he can make out is blue and yellow and starry starry night and huh. He thinks he kinda likes Don Mclean.

Pat didn’t say anything (and eventually does fall asleep, listening to Tiger just before he flicks to another station) because he doesn't want to ruin the moment. Pat never says anything, because Reece and Sam were out cold and Tiger wasn't even looking his way but it feels like it's for him, he likes to think the memory is only his. So he keeps it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are much appreciated


End file.
